Jenna remembered all too well the weeks of hard rehabilitation it had taken to get her back on her feet and walking again. And yet now, after the ordeal she'd just awakened from, her limbs felt steady and nimble.
Completely unaffected by the prolonged lack of use.
Her body felt oddly revived. Stronger, yet, somehow not quite her own.
"None of this makes sense to me," she murmured, as she and Alex continued their progress down the long corridor.
"Oh, Jen." Alex touched her shoulder with a gentle hand. "I know about the confusion you must be feeling right now. Believe me, I know. I wish none of this had happened to you. I wish there was some way to take back what you've gone through."
Jenna blinked slowly, registering the depth of her friend's regret. She had questions--so many questions--but as they walked deeper into the maze of corridors, the mingled sounds of voices carried out from a glass-walled room up ahead. She heard Brock's deep, rolling baritone and the lighter, quickly spoken, British-tinged syllables of the man named Gideon.
As she and Alex neared the meeting room, she saw that the one called Lucan was there, too, as were Kade and two others who only fortified the large-and-lethal vibe that these guys seemed to wear as casually as their black fatigues and well-stocked weapons belts.
"This is the tech lab," Alex explained to her. "All the computer equipment you see in there is Gideon's domain. Kade says he's some kind of genius when it comes to technology. Probably a genius when it comes to just about everything."
As they paused in the passageway, Kade glanced up and gave Alex a lingering look through the glass. Electricity crackled in his silver eyes, and Jenna would have to be unconscious in her sickbed not to feel the shared heat between Alex and her man.
Jenna got her own share of looks from the others gathered in the glass-enclosed room. Lucan and Gideon both turned her way, as did two other big men who were not familiar to her. One of them a severe-looking, golden-eyed blond whose stare felt as cold and unfeeling as a blade, the other an olive-skinned man with a thick crown of chocolate-brown waves that accentuated his long-lashed topaz eyes and an unfortunate mass of scars that riddled the left side of his otherwise flawless face. There was curiosity in the men's frank stares, maybe a bit of suspicion, too.
"That's Hunter and Rio," Alex said, indicating the menacing blond and the scarred brunet respectively. "They're members of the Order, too."
Jenna gave a vague nod of acknowledgment, feeling as conspicuous in front of these men as she had her first day on the job with the Alaska State Troopers, a fresh-from-the-academy rookie and a female besides. But here, the feeling wasn't so much about gender discrimination or petty male insecurities. She'd known enough of that bullshit during her tenure with the Staties to realize this was something different. Something a whole lot deeper.
Here, she felt that by virtue of her mere presence, she was treading on sacred ground. In some unspoken way, she got the sense from the five pairs of eyes studying her that in this place, among these people, she was somehow the ultimate outsider.
Even Brock's dark, absorbing gaze settled on her with a weighty appraisal that seemed to say he wasn't sure he liked seeing her there, regardless of the care and kindness he'd shown her back in the infirmary.
Jenna wouldn't have argued that point for a second. She tended to agree with the vibe she was getting through the glass walls of the tech lab.
She didn't belong here. These were not her people.
No, something about each of the hard, unreadable faces fixed on her told her that they were not her kind at all. They were something else ...
something other.
But after what she'd been through in her cabin in Alaska--after what she'd seen of herself in the infirmary room--could she even be certain of what she was now?
The question chilled her to her bones.
She didn't want to think about it. Could hardly bear to accept that she'd been fed upon by something as monstrous and terrifying as the creature that had held her prisoner in her own home all those hours. The same creature that had implanted the bit of foreign matter in her body and turned her life--what little had been left of it--inside out.
What was to become of her now?
How would she ever get back to the woman she was before?
Jenna nearly sagged under the weight of more questions she wasn't ready to consider.
Making it worse, the sense of confusion that had followed her through the corridors of the compound rose up on her again, stronger now.
Everything seemed to amplify around her, from the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights over her head--lights that glared too bright for her sensitive eyes--to the accelerating drum of her heartbeat that seemed to be heading for overdrive, pushing too much blood through her veins. Her skin felt too tight, wrapped around a body that was quickening with some strange new awareness. She had felt its stirrings from the moment she'd opened her eyes in the infirmary, and instead of leveling out, it was getting worse.
Some strange new power seemed to be growing inside her.
Stretching out, awakening ...
"I'm feeling kind of weird," she said to Alex, as her temples ticked with the pound of her pulse, her palms going moist where they remained fisted deep inside the pockets of her robe. "I think I need to get out of here, get some air."
Alex reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Jenna's face.